It is known for a software application to generate and/or process a document and prepare the document for printing by a printer driver. The application may electronically file the document in a medium. Document management systems are also known to archive documents for long term retention for example in TIF- and PDF-image formats.
It is known to transform data for printing a document into a long-term archive format, and then use the transformed data for archiving. For example, International Patent Application WO 02/19086 describes such a method for archiving large data streams as generated and processed by the host computer of an electronic data processing center. According to the International Patent Application WO 02/19086, an enhanced spooling system which is part of the printer driver performs the archiving process as follows. The enhanced spooling system collects files to be printed, checks whether an incoming file should be archived, and if so, how the incoming file should be archived. If a file should be archived, the enhanced spooling system supplies the file data and the necessary archiving parameters to a program module to generate three data sets which are then transmitted to a storage system. Because the archiving method described in the International Patent Application WO 02/19086 uses an enhanced spooling system and a specially designed printer driver with an enhanced functionality, it may not work with client computers or workstations with standard user applications and a standard printer driver.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to electronically file documents which applications have produced and a printer driver has prepared, without special enhancements to either the applications or printer driver.